For better or worse, the ubiquitous, now lowly Motorola RAZR V3 has been the top selling handset in the US for the past 3 years. According to the research group NPD, the iPhone 3G surpassed the RAZR in sales in Q3 of this year. Of course, the fact that the RAZR V3 is getting pretty old and tired might have just a little to do with this.

Interestingly, phones with QWERTY keyboards, on-screen or hardware-based, comprise 4 out of 5 of the top sellers now:

What doe people want? According to NPD: "When it comes to the specific features that motivated U.S. consumers to purchase, 43 percent of handset buyers cited the need for a camera and 36 percent noted the ability to send and receive text messages. Mobile phones with a QWERTY keyboard experienced the greatest year-over-year rise in sales; 30 percent of handsets were sold with this feature in Q3 2008, versus just 11 percent the year prior. Also this quarter 83 percent of phones purchased were Bluetooth enabled (versus 72 percent last year), and nearly seven in 10 (68 percent) of phones purchased in Q3 were music enabled (versus 49 percent last year)."